Watching Without him
by Heavenztrash
Summary: Slightly insane Vaultie/Charon/mention of Gob. Violence, adult themes, angst, potentially bad grammar, ghoul love. Warned you are. Shout out to all the girls and boys who write Ghoul/Charon centric stuff. This is me trying to give back.
1. Watching without

Fidgeting.  
Endlessly.  
Making little piles of charred pebbles,  
balancing cans one on top of the other.  
Because I cannot take this much longer.  
Because nothing is nothing.  
Sprawling, silent nothing.

Watching him watching the horizon.  
Day after day.  
His flayed fingers twitching against his shotgun.  
Night after night, week after week.  
His jagged symmetry over the image of my father in my mind's eye .  
Death after death after death.  
Everything runs together.  
Blood and dust, rot and rust.  
Nowhere to run to or from.  
And if I hadn't of touched him for however brief a time,  
I may think he was a hallucination too.

He crouches.  
Never sits.  
Perpetually vigilant, animal cool.  
Scanning every inch of everything,  
waiting to unload hot hot death  
unto whomever or whatever may come.  
I'm always hearing things, but sometimes nothing.  
Can't sneak up on him. Can actually sleep.  
How can I not be thankful to the man…the ghoul who makes it possible for me to sleep?

But.  
I don't know what he wants anymore.  
So I beat the shit out of an old car with a sledgehammer  
and make a nice pattern with broken glass.

Because when I try to touch him he turns away.  
When I look at him he stares harder into the Wastes  
and the last thing I heard him say to me was "no."  
no no no. The word sticks in my head.  
A loop. A shroud. A limitation. A curse.

I envy those he slaughters sometimes because at least he talks to them before he offs them.  
He doesn't talk to me anymore.  
I'm not sure if it's a coincidence that we both kind of talk to ourselves.  
As of late I've noticed that we're not only talking to ourselves but answering ourselves too.  
It strikes me as sad so I mash Fancy Lad Cakes and Nuka Cola together and feel ok until I crash and have to search for something to set on fire.

Nothing about me doesn't ache.  
Brain, body, heart, soul.  
Even my teeth ache.  
I always feel frozen despite being encased in sticky leather in 90 something degree weather. I've stopped caring. My hair is matted and my face and my hands are black with soot. People are weirded out by me. Even more so than usual maybe.

By the time I started coming around Megaton with Charon, people were already eeked.  
I just rub people the wrong way. I know this but I try to work around it in the beginning when there's still a chance to convince people that I'm really ok before I prove otherwise.  
Gob was always always cool to me. He's used to people judging him based on his looks and being shocked when he's all sane and easy and it's actually the opposite with me.  
He just kinda took me astride. I just kind of exploded Colin in Gob's name.  
I don't think he's figured it out yet.  
I wanted to put a grenade in Nova's pocket too because she said she wouldn't "lower her standards" to do something nice for Gob even though I said I pay for it and she implied that I had low standards when I confided in her how I felt about Charon. The only reason I didn't take a ripper to her is because I knew if I did Charon may get gun happy and kill everything in sight because if you want to talk instability, I may have some unsettling habits but Charon takes the cake for going apeshit.  
Nova pissed me off alright but that doesn't mean I want to wipe out Megaton.  
Once he gets going I haven't figured out a way to stop him.  
So I just sit down and make a sandcastle until he's done.  
With or without a grenade in it.

It was hard not to grow very fond of Charon.  
One day I was convinced that the way I felt towards him was love, so I  
just walked over to where he was crouched,  
watching watching watching as always, and decided that if I loved him maybe he could love me back and then I wouldn't feel like I was spiraling all the time.  
So I fell onto and into him like falling into bed after days of running in the blistering sun.  
Swimming, staring at the sky as he pulled me downwards for he was as ravenous as I.  
One wobbly, rapturous moment, nothing existed outside the heat of his breath, his kiss  
and his hands that left furrows of bruises on my ribs.  
The ribs that hold my very viscera that he has single handedly preserved. Therefore as much his as my harmonica belonged to me because it was in my pocket and was therefore mine.  
Not that I was in his pocket but I was trying my very best to get somewhere in there.  
I was now pretty certain that this was actually happening but I wasn't certain that he wasn't trying to devour me because I've never kissed a meat grinder but I'd assume it would be something like this. So I did the logical thing and bit him to see if he would bite back. He mashed me down onto the ground I felt like bubblegum must feel when I step on it, so I figured I was done for either way so I may as well just relax. I unbuckled some of his gear and he unbuckled some of mine and things were just getting really interesting when he jumped up, scooped up his shotgun and pushed me so hard he knocked the wind out of me.

A moment of terror passed through me and I called out in shock.  
He struck me in the solar plexus with his open hand, hard, sent me tumbling onto the ground, rolling down a slope. I clutched my chest , curled up into fetal position and lay still for a moment at the base of the slope my mind awash.  
Did ghouls have some sort of combat inhibitor like bots? Did they frenzy like ants?  
Was he going feral on me? Was he going to do me like he did Azrukahl?  
Did Azrukahl try to get frisky with him too? Is that why he's dead? Is it possible that they could've done…stuff? Where was my harmonica?

I rolled over blind, trying to rub dust and tears out of my eyes.  
I felt his feet on either side of me, straddling me and I scrambled to pull my combat knife out of my boot, raising it to stab him in the leg or wherever.

The familiar metallic ring of his shotgun echoed in my ears and I slid down another slope, bashing my head on a couple of rocks for good measure. My eyes cleared up enough to see an arch of blood squirting up from a smattering of holes near my abdomen, Charon's fuzzy shadow he stood over me like an angel of death, shotgun in hand.

Bleeding to the point that it was almost comical, I jumped up and flew at him, knife in my hand because I couldn't think of something better to do instead and I didn't want to blow him up because I liked him too much. He caught me in mid air and effortlessly flipped me onto my back like the duck and cover turtle, pinning my arms to the ground with one strong arm, grabbing my knife and throwing it far with the other.

"You're bleeding" He said, his voice ragged even for a ghoul .  
He continued to pin me with one arm, brought his other hand down on where the blood was coming out. Pressed down. Searing pain.

"Freak." I croaked.  
"I'm open minded and all but heavy beatings and being shot in the chest are a little hardcore even for me."

I coughed up blood.  
Felt a strange sense of calmness.  
I wanted to tell him not to feel bad for doing this.  
I wanted oblivion. Killing was obviously preferable to him versus the things I wanted to do so why not let him do to me what he did to his last boss? Why not let Charon have a giggle for once?  
I'd seen and had enough anyways.  
Nothing and nothing.  
Endless sprawling nothing.

"Charon." I rasped. Blood bubbled up from my mouth as I spoke., tickled as it ran down my neck.  
"Just kill me already if that's how you like it, if that's what floats your boat. Just get it over with.  
Enjoy."

He got up, growled and turned his back to me.

And that's when I noticed the dead Deathclaw.  
Its head was splattered and its claws were crimson tipped.  
He'd killed the thing and I'd basically screwed myself up yet again.  
He'd pushed me out of the goddamn way and I'd tried to stab him.  
What a wonderful person I was.  
I propped myself up. Applied pressure to the wounds and meekly pulled my armor back up.

"I owe you an apology." I said.

I picked myself up and went to him but he held his hand out, preventing me from advancing any closer.

"No." He whispered almost inaudibly, his eyes haunted, harsh and heartsick all at the same time.

" I didn't really think you would do me in or that you were like a closet sexual raider or something." I laughed trying to lighten the mood.

His response was the back still turned to me.  
I watched his shoulderblades shifting for a moment and then apparently blacked out.

I woke up at home in Megaton. Didn't know how I got there but my entire steroid and stimpack stash was gone and my arms were sore and bruised on the insides of my elbows.

Charon sat with his back turned to me, quietly harvesting what was left of Wadsworth for scrap metal.

He's sat with his back turned to me ever since the day of the Deathclaw,  
silently expressing in no uncertain terms that  
whilst I held the contract, he held everything else…including my life.  
Love/lust were an unacceptable risk and nothing more and he would protect my worthless ass even if it meant sacrificing the last remnants of his basic human needs.  
I wonder.  
What was passing up sex when he already lived on next to nothing and slept  
only enough to keep himself from collapsing?

All I know is that I escaped my vault but he can't seem to escape his and I feel like I'm no better than the scurvy slavers I've met in my travels because no matter what I do I'll always feel like he's not getting what he deserves.

Weeks pass and we peek out into the Wastes again and I still don't know how not to watch him so I'm just watching him. I'm watching him wait for something to inject his rage into because he's got to put something somewhere and I'm piling tin cans one on top of the others and making patterns out of charred pebbles and pieces of twigs and things because I've got to put something somewhere.

Charon crouches because he never sits and I can only see his pale eyes from the side because I still haven't gotten him to look at me and I'm not about to order him to do anything nevermind that.

Sometimes I just hope that he'll fail to protect me  
because maybe then we can both be set free because either way  
he's the only one who can release me in one way or another.  
So I wait.

Day after day.  
Night after night.  
Bullet after bullet.  
Death after death.

And time drags on.


	2. Chapter 2

Note: This is indeed the same slightly insane Vaultie from "Watching Without Him".  
As I mentioned before, the stream of consciousness that this LW exhibits is more or less my own  
and I find it liberating to admit that to you.   
This is completely freeform and that being said I feel like I should apologize.  
Sorry. But then again, nobody is forcing you to read this.  
Anyways.

Watching Without Him  
Part II

Dear diary,  
I found you and now you're mine and I have pencils and time and a knife and things to say  
and you can't turn your back to me like he does because you're a diary.  
Diaries can't run away or pretend they didn't hear me, so you're pretty much fucked now, dear diary.  
Welcome to the club.

So, did you ever notice how when you're looking forward to something time just flies by but when nothing is on the go, time drags like the way that Wastelander did after I exploded his legs off?  
For some reason I'm still here and so is he and it's like we've been here forever and ever.  
The world is a cage of dust not able to of settle and we're no different from dust.  
Like dust, we're forever pushed by forces we can't even see. We land on a rock and stupidly call it home before the wind blows us somewhere else or just tears us apart and scatters us across the universe.

I lost my train of thought there, dear diary.  
Let me start again.

Motherfucking Charon.  
He still watches and I still watch him watch and I'm running out of things to do.  
Watching him has become an exercise in frustration, like trying to carve a knife out of a spoon.  
I'm running out of things that make sense and the scratching noises, the strains of words that scrape my brain inside my head get louder with every passing day. Sometimes I just run and run to see if I can put some distance between them and me. Maybe I have a transmitter or something in my head. No matter how deep into the Wastes I go there is never silence and some sort of an implant is the only logical explanation. It's not too far-fetched, right?  
Nothing fills the hole. I'm sure that nothing could make me feel ok except for him.  
But I think he hates me because he still hasn't talked to me since the Deathclaw incident.  
Either he doesn't understand that he could really fix me or he doesn't care.  
Either way, now I have you, dear diary. And you very well may have more pages than I have days so that's one thing I don't have to worry about.

Since the night of the Deathclaw, watching him has made me feel vaguely ill and I don't know what the name for the feeling is but it feels like someone is crushing my heart and I don't like it.  
I've actually started to look forward to pain and debris and cascades of blood and the way that little thing in the back of people's throats dances when they scream at you.  
I'm figuring out ways to cope because if it's still going to be "no" then I need to find something to do besides using up all my grenades again.  
When a grenade goes off for a split second everything makes sense but then it's over.  
There's never enough grenades. Never. And there's never enough flamer fuel either.  
Unlike the guy on Galaxy Radio, I _do_ want to set the world on fire. Fire makes sense.  
It consumes all doubt, devouring souls and lies.  
It speaks the truth.

On that note, I can add Arefu onto the list of places I've burned to the ground.  
It started as simply as just wanting to put a grenade in that crazy woman's pocket and watching her 'splode but it ended up in the whole place going up in flames as it tends to.  
Oh well, they had problems anyways, right? If they were smarter they'd have just run away instead of getting in the way of my fire so it's their fault they're all dead now. That's the way I see it.

Back to Charon.  
I just wish he would stop pretending that everything is so black and/or white and reach into my head and yank out all the doubt and things that make me twitch and listen for people or things who are hiding really really well if they're not talking through a transmitter in my brain.  
And then Charon speaks and I come back and all I see is him and all that there is is him.  
His visage all-consuming, bigger than the Wastes. Dust seems to slide off his skin rather than sticking like it does on me. He is...pure. I just have to peel away the leather and there will be fire in there.  
Primal. Unfettered. Uncompromising.  
Hungry and writhing underneath the shroud that he hides within.  
Desperate to escape like every flame I've helped release.

So if it's going to be "no" then I'll be damned if I'm not going to make him suffer right along with me.  
Last week I ordered him to wear a party hat while we took down a camp of muties just to spite him.  
This week an idea hit me like a ton of bricks and once I have it worded, I'm going to tear a page out of you, dear diary and give it to Charon.  
Bye for now.

Date: Dunno.

Hi, diary, it's me again, Kee.  
Who else would it be? Are you cheating on me, diary?  
I'll burn you if you do. Hahahaha.

So I'm going to give him the contract today.  
I just copied his contract word for word on the paper I ripped from your spine  
but I switched his name with mine so that the contract says that he's my employer.  
I have no idea what kind of effect this is going to have, but I have nothing to lose so who cares?  
The more I think about it, the more there seems to be to analyze and then my head feels like bugs trying to escape hard-packed sand and my heart starts going like a jackhammer and I find myself doing something like whipping pebbles at him. He always does the same thing though. He just sits there and takes it or retreats with a grumble. I wish he would fucking kill me. I wish he would something.  
Something is always better than nothing, because as I said before nothing is nothing.  
That makes me wonder. Is there truly such a thing as nothing or is it is just the lack of….thing?  
What is thing? What is some thing? Just some thing? Any thing?  
If I take anything and say it's some thing does that automatically make it less than nothing?  
Maybe if he thought I was something I wouldn't be nothing.  
Maybe the contract is something. Both of them.

Date: The day after yesterday and before tomorrow.

I gave him the contract today.  
I have to…pace myself. I'm bubbling over. I'm carbonated.  
We were at the shacks and he was on his rock when I came and dropped it on the parched earth before him. The wind carried it away for a second and I yelled at him to get it and of course he sprang to his heels and retrieved it. I told him to read it. He read it and oh god…the way he looked up from it, the way he looked at me…how do I describe it?  
His eyes were like fire without using up all my flamer fuel. No. Like a those grenades I stash to use on robots. The pulsey ones. Blue and slow. A crackling nimbus. The ones that bloom.  
"What is this?" He said. His voice! Directed at me! His hand where mine had once been on your yellow paper! "What is the meaning of this?" he said.  
"It's my contract" I said to him. "You are now my employer and I will serve _you_."  
He opened his mouth to say something but no sound came out. But I knew I wasn't deaf because I heard the wind carrying the dust. But for once I didn't feel like I had to move with it. My feet felt bolted to the ground. We stood there for a long time, me watching him search for something as his hand tensed over and over the piece of paper and me just watching him, feeding off the waves of mystification that lazily rolled over his heart and through his eyes, mixing with the dust.  
"Well?" I finally said.  
"I do not understand this" He said to me.  
He put his hand to his head like he knew I was in there and I made a conscious effort to wrap my arms around the inside of his head and not let go as he tried to shake me loose.  
"What's not to understand?" I said to him. "You now hold my contract."  
I got bored of standing there after awhile. He had become a statue. More of a statue than usual.  
I walked up to him and poked him.  
"put it in your pocket." I said.  
He balked. Charon is not one to balk, but it was a balk as sure as my eyes are green.  
"How can you be my employer if I am yours? This does not make sense." He said.  
As his hand gripped the paper I worried he'd crush it into dust.  
I pulled my goggles over my eyes so said dust wouldn't dry out my eyeballs and wondered how he tripped around all day without feeling like a piece of jerky.  
Now the dust made sense. It told me as much and who was I to ignore it?  
I pulled his contract from my boot and held it with my two fingers, letting the wind threaten to carry it away to wherever all that dust ends up.  
"No!" he said.  
that word again.  
"That's not necessary!" He sounded panicked as he took a few steps forward, his arms outstretched like mine when my Dad used to give me candy.  
I rolled up his contract and shoved it back in my boot and watched with great satisfaction as he neatly tucked my contract into his rucksack.  
"My first order?" I said to him. That moment. Better than a grenade. Better than the explosion at Raven Rock that had me weeping for the sheer beauty of it.  
He appeared to be deep in thought for a moment, and then he socked it to me, deliberately, plainly.  
"Your grenades and ammo" he said pointing to the ground.  
I was taken aback and asked him "Excuse me?"  
"You can't be trusted." He said to me. "No more destruction."  
Wait a minute…  
"I order you to retract that order and allow me to keep my possessions." I said to him.  
Confusion kept us both fixed to our respective spots. He wracking his brain and me wracking mine.  
But this was something. Something is good.  
Finally he just turned away and went to his rock and I went to mine and rocked back and forth because it helps me think. I thought about dust and something and nothing and fire and how much I just wished I could throw his contract to the wind and have him stay with me anyways. Because I trust him more than I trust myself. Way more. I don't trust myself as far as I can throw myself.  
I took out my harmonica and started to play. Well, when I say play, I mean blow, because I wouldn't say I actually know how to play and he yelled at me to "shut the fuck up!"  
I tucked my harmonica back into my pocket.  
"As you wish, Charon" I yelled back at him.  
He groaned in the not too far distance as he shambled a little farther away and settled on his fall back rock, unintelligibly cursing under his breath.  
I fell asleep wrapping his first order to me around me like a blanket.  
He had ordered me to shut the fuck up and that was not nothing.  
And now I feel like I may not blow away afterall.


End file.
